The Law of Series

[gattino]

There's currently a programme on tv called The Secret Life of Twins. This is of interest to me as it is the culmination of a large cluster of encounters with the subject of identical twins over the last several days. I won't bother elaborating on the details of them but I've had two direct encounters with twins, seen 3 tv appearances and several references to the word or concept, all piling up against each other.

In other circumstances such a series of improbable repetitions can be - has been - interpreted as having some intelligent or spiritual meaning "someone up there is trying to tell you something". But the idea of twins has no personal relevance to me so I wouldn't even start down that road of thought. Instead it seems to be the most common form of coincidence there is. The cluster. Or the series. The same word or name popping up multiple times once you've heard it for the first time etc. Once, having noticed several people pass me by on walking sticks, I was suddenly swamped by them left right and centre on a public street...all seemingly unrelated and oblvious to each other (and no, not outside the hospital).

Any old hoo, apart from inviting any anecdotes or observations on this minor but common phenomenon, it brought to mind the german scientist Paul Kamerer who wrote a paper the Law of the Series in the 20s or 30s. I know this because, along wiht Jung and Pauli, he gets name checked in every book and article on coincidence as a subject of study. So I looked him up. Surprisingly it turns out his work had never been translated into english, which would account for the lack of detail in all those coincidence books. But I found this 10 page pdf article examining and reassessing his scientific theories about coincidence as an underlying principle at work. I won't pretend to have understood the little I've read, but here it is...

http://www.astrococktail.com/PDF/PAULKA_x007E_1.pdf

 

[Ermintruder]

Saw part of the programme tonight. The gender reassignment twin instance was astounding. I shall read the Kramer Law of Series paper, many thanks.

As an Urban Myth (or putative scientific fact) I seem to remember reading at one time that ultimately the world's population will consist of twins. This supposed projection hinges on the key precept that twins are more likely to give birth/produce twins (instinctively, I doubt this personally)

 

[EnolaGaia]

Bump for update / clarification.

The Austrian psychologist's name is Paul Kammerer (note spelling).

The Law of Series terminology is used for a range of theories and models relating to event clustering, among which Kammerer's work represents a thematic precedent.

Kammerer typically used the term 'seriality' to denote the principle underlying clusterings / coincidences.

Additional entry points for investigating Kammerer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kammerer

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Law_of_series#Kammerer
http://prac.im.pwr.edu.pl/~downar/english/documents/law of series.pdf

 

[Mikefule]

That's an interesting read: Kammerer and his "naive experiments" and his ultimate sad demise.

I see a similarity between three things: the "law of series", pareidolia, and ley lines. The similarity is the human tendency to see structure where there is only randomness, and in doing so to ignore the many examples that do not fit any apparent pattern.

• Law of Series: You see and hear 1,000 things in a day, and you notice the 3 similar ones and look for more — possibly extending your criteria to make identifying further examples more likely. This happened in the example given in the scholarpedia article linked by EnolaGaia:
  • 2 encounters with people called Rohan
  • 1 sighting of a random person who resembled another person who was called Rohan
  • That person mentioning Weissenbach, and
  • Someone else — nothing to do with Rohan — also mentioning Weissenbach.
• Pareidolia: You see a sky full of clouds and notice one group of shadows that looks like a face in relief. You study the clouds and contrive to see several other faces in silhouette, although most of them are caricatures. You ignore the rest of the clouds, which are just cloud shaped.
• Ley lines: You look on the map and notice 3 features in rough alignment. You extend the line until it intersects something else. You start to look for other alignments. Each time you find an example, you may extend your criteria. "This one's an alignment if you include cross roads. Well, if we're including crossroads, here's another ley line, and this one's got the fork of a river on it too! And in that case..."

Another factor is that some clusters or alignments result from a cause which may not be immediately obvious:

• Certain surnames may be more common in one area or culture than another. Styles of dress may be more popular in a given age group found in a particular location. A holiday destination is more likely to be mentioned in or around the holiday season.
• Alignment of geographical features may sometimes be because they were built alongside a Roman road, or follow an underlying geological feature.

I am also reminded of that mildly irritating saying, "They say bad things come in threes." The person who has said it then looks for a third thing they can define as one of the three, so that they can stop worrying (or chattering about worrying!).

If I may be allowed a plug, one of the themes running through my novel, Bridge of Otherwhere (on Kindle) is the number of convenient coincidences that happen in the protagonist's life and particularly in connection with his relationship with another character. The protagonist struggles to understand how many of these are "just coincidences" and how many are somehow "caused" for a purpose.